Maybe this is the year you are thinking about attending a childcare conference. You may be wondering what conferences for Early Childhood Education professionals have to offer and whether it’s worth your investment of time and money to attend one. In the following article, we discuss five benefits of attending a childcare conference. Read on to find out more.

5 Benefits of Childcare Conferences

Whether you attend a childcare conference alone, with your spouse, or with several members of your team, you will discover these conferences offer significant benefits for your investment of time and money. Here’s why you should consider attending a childcare conference:

Professional Development – Conferences give you and your team members a unique opportunity to invest in your knowledge and skills by bringing together industry leaders and successful professionals to share their experiences and insights. Gain know-how and secrets of the trade with key-note speaker addresses, breakout sessions, and one-to-one mentoring opportunities you won’t find elsewhere. At a childcare conference, you and your team members get to learn from the best of the best—the people who have reached the level of success in their own childcare businesses that you hope to achieve.

Continuing Education – In addition to general professional development opportunities, you will also likely have the chance to work on your own continuing education requirements. Many childcare conferences offer continuing education units (CEU) for attending, and these can be used to satisfy requirements for licensing or count toward earning or renewing a Child Development Associate (CDA) credential. Some Early Childhood Education professionals are motivated to attend conferences by the continuing education opportunities alone, and it’s definitely something you will want to consider.

Networking – Expanding your professional network is also a great reason to attend a childcare conference. In addition to hearing from thought-leaders and industry forerunners, you can also connect with other attendees who may be in a similar season of their business development as you are or a few steps ahead. Chatting with other ECE professionals, hearing their personal and professional insights and stories, and sharing your own can be highly encouraging. You may even make lasting connections!

Resources – Childcare conferences are a hub for a variety of fantastic tools, programs, and resources for ECE professionals. These resources come in the form of vendors. You will typically find a variety of vendors with connections to the childcare industry at these events, from childcare software programs to professional coaches and mentors, to other professional services, like accounting and marketing. Take advantage of these resources as needed for your own childcare business, especially if you can score discounts on services you need just for being a conference attendee.

Motivation – Finally, renewing your motivation as a business owner and a childcare professional is a huge benefit to attending a conference. Getting “away from it all” for a couple of days and getting into a new environment, surrounded by other professionals looking to do the same thing, can be exactly the reset you need to regain some motivation you’ve lost through burn-out, overworking yourself, and trying to do too much for your childcare business. Many attendees leave these conferences feeling refreshed, motivated, and ready to take what they have learned back to their team and start implementing new ideas and tactics at their businesses right away.

We hope reading about the benefits of childcare conferences here will inspire you to attend one in the near future. Have you already made a practice of attending childcare conferences? Which ones do you love? Let us know in the comment section below.

Honest Buck Accounting exists to provide expertise and a variety of professional accounting services to Early Childhood Education businesses. Schedule a call with one of our experts to learn more about our financial services. We look forward to hearing from you!